


Nàdleehi

by Gaby007



Series: A/B/O around the world [1]
Category: Green Arrow (Comics)
Genre: Culture Shock, Gen, Navajo Traditions, Non-Traditional Alpha/Beta/Omega Dynamics, Omega Roy Harper
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-13
Updated: 2020-11-13
Packaged: 2021-03-09 23:00:28
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 465
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27544231
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Gaby007/pseuds/Gaby007
Summary: Roy Harper has his first bleeding when he's eleven, but he doesn't become an Omega before his fourteen year. Between these two points in his life, he's nàdleehi.
Series: A/B/O around the world [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2013358
Comments: 1
Kudos: 14





	Nàdleehi

**Author's Note:**

> I am not Navajo, but I tried to respect said culture. If I made a mistake, I just ask for your understanding and forgiveness.
> 
> Also, English isn't my first language, so you will have to forgive any clunky sentences or misspellings.

Roy Harper didn't become an Omega before Ollie decided he wanted to adopt him as a ward. Oh, he already has his monthly bleeding since he was eleven -- so it meant three years to get used to the cramps and the smell, thank fuck he got that out of the way before going to live with Ollie or both of them would have never survived This Talk -- but he wasn't _Omega_. Omega was a Western gender, for Western people.

He had been from the People, _Diné_ , and that meant he had been nàdleehi.

He still remembered Brave Bow's startled pride when he first woke up in his ruined sheets, how the older man explained him he wasn't sick, his nature just wasn't fully one of a male and it just happened, just like a girl could be a bit of a boy sometimes. Gender wasn't just male or female, and Roy wasn't stuck fully in one of both categories.

In one way, _Diné_ was rather more imprecise regarding the gender spectrum as it only acknowledged male, female and nàdleehi without any care for the more scientific Greek-themed classification, but on the other side, Roy never had felt suffocated by his gender when he still lived in the reservation as he sometimes felt boxed in for having ovaries since he went among white people.

If Roy wanted to wear pants and learn to weave, then it was okay for the reservation -- he was from two natures, why wouldn't he? But if Roy wanted to put on a skirt and try his hand at boxing, white people were looking at him weirdly -- he was Omega, why was he so wild?

Even Ollie tended to be startled, and God knows the guy at least _tried_ to be open-minded -- if he hadn't, Dinah would have punched his stupid face _and_ dumped his ass out. But for all his willingness to accept the world was a huge and complicated mess, Ollie still was quite naive, unexpectedly so, and thought people would follow to the letter some behavioural schemes recorded in _Social Interactions for Dummies_.

What a disaster. How could anyone believe the Queen scion was a functional human being, Roy was genuinely confused.

Still, Ollie never even tried to force his ward into the narrow box of Western gender expectations, so power to him. He even accepted to not outright use the Omega label when talking about Roy, in spite of the boy obviously being one with the full package of sweet smell and ovaries.

But that was the thing, Roy didn't feel like an Omega, a skittish and frail creature that unfortunately was born with an Y-chromosome, he felt like a male-bodied person that happened to lean towards feminine. He felt nàdleehi.

Frankly, that was how he prefered it.


End file.
